Those Who Tread Betwixt Fate and Folly
by Chris Walker
Summary: A young Acolyte of the Hive, cruel and ruthless and expressing much potential in her near future, encounters a lone Guardian upon the surface of the moon, hideously injured by the doings of her sect. For all her hatred of the Light and those who would wield it, upon encountering her crippled foe, the Acolyte finds herself feeling something insidious that defies reason — allure.
1. Prologue

I was born in the Darkness.

From tenebrous depths I had emerged, blind and screaming. From pupal shell I thereafter left, naked and thrashing, witness to an alien world that I did not recognize. That I could not recognize.

It was cold and full of color. It was agony to my new flesh. It was repulsive. It hurt. It hurt. It _hurt!_

I clawed and staggered around in the dust and slime and rock and stone and screamed, my newfound sight and feeling buffeted with this torment. My senses were filled to brimming with this... suffering. I moved and screamed until I could no more and I fell to the ground, curling into a ball. There I wept in tight self-embrace, not knowing what to do. Not knowing what cruel power this was and why it chose to gnaw at me no sooner than I had been born with cursed sentience and sapience into this callous world.

Then I heard a skittering. Then a voice. A single voice, so soft and sweet, and that was all.

My head swiveled up from the coarse floor, searching for the sound that pierced through my pain. What I first saw through eyes so clouded and wracked with a throbbing ache was a cluster of small bodies scuttling upon the floor before me. They were worms. They wriggled and skittered and moved their plump little sallow bodies around in a mindless fashion. They were all I saw, yet the voice was still calling to me. Desperate need outdoing my wish to whimper and give in to my endless cascade of agony, my sore eyes searched and searched for the source. And then I finally found it.

My face froze when realization dawned upon me. It was a worm. A worm that had wriggled away from the others and up to me. This one, particular worm, so fat in form with ugly brown-black head and of pale-white flesh. And it indeed spoke.

It was conversing to me in a language I knew not, but somehow understood with perfect fluency. It was... truly calling to me. Asking me to take it up in my worthless palms and... ingest it. It was inviting me to feast upon a power it would bestow. A power that would give me my meaning; that would end my agonies and satiate all my wants. Quickly, I snatched it up and held it to my puling maw, unable to resist its words, be it a promise or a lie.

Past my teeth the chittering thing slithered and down my throat it slipped. I felt its cool body grace my interior, its weight as it fell. Then I could feel it moving within me. Needle feet pinching and prodding my intestines. It was adjusting to my weak form, so new and helpless. It was filling it with something I could not fathom at that delicate moment. A deep darkness that snuffed out my sufferings ever so slowly but surely. A dark, filling... _emptiness._ It touched me and took away what I despised so. And it molded my tortured flesh into what it saw fit.

As time passed and as I felt my body adapt to the queer happenings that affected it, I noticed the cold no longer felt so dreadful. Neither did the colors, or the pain that weighed me down. It felt almost welcoming. Then it truly did. Not a foe, not a discomfort, but something good. A friend. A loved one.

From the ground I stood, my trembling legs, longer and stronger, lifting me in crooked display. Sounds I had not noticed before entered my mind. I turned about and saw a hundred shapes, a hundred figures. All stunted and wispy and puling and hissing. All crooked.

The shapes were as mine, and were rising as I did. They were my sistren, and they had just emerged from their own pupae. They had just eaten the worms upon the floor as I had done. Embraced the strength that would be enough to exist in this reality. Embraced power and meaning. Embraced the Darkness.

We were all united in a chorus of screeching, rasping and hissing. We mingled together with our bodies and song until some of us fell silent and let their gazes fall from floor and sibling to the realm above. I turned my head to the commotion that surely captivated them so, and thus did I see _her._

Yes, her. Our mother. I could see our dear mother looming above us. She cast a magnificent shadow upon us, her wizened figure and the ragged, crumbling cloth she wore helping to provide it. Hers was a visage of rawest beauty, both great and terrible to behold. We cried to her, demanding her attention. Her answer to our plea was given when a new sound, of something broken falling and scuffling over dark rock, landing before us in a dry heap.

What was thrown to our mercy was made quickly known as it tried moving. It was a thing—a creature not like us. Were it still standing upon its hind feet it would cast a tall figure, and as it was now it was equally plain to see that it was almost twice our girth as well. It had six lithe limbs clothed in thin armor, and gnarled talons ending on feeble hands. A host of tattered remnants of clothing and false-chitin I had not seen before in my short life and could scarcely put sensible names to with my naive mind dressed the being. Four eyes aglow with blue stared out, looking everywhere its head could peer so very weakly.

And it was still alive. Still mewling faintly with what little life was its own. I scented a dying aura from where I stood. It filled me with a sudden loathing I could scarcely comprehend. A rage that boiled and festered in my bowels. Something foul. Something wrong and unwelcome.

I shifted a brief glance to my sistren. They, too, could smell it. Their shrill hissing and hitching motions said to me that that it, too, filled them with an inexplicable fury. But they were also wary, fearful of reprisal from the dying entity and its decaying aura. They stayed where they were or else stole all but a meager distance up to the being, only to be held back by a lingering sense of caution.

I wanted only more.

I was the first to approach the prone figure, and I did so slowly. The creature stared at me as I approached, weakness shining in its four eyes and a murmur fleeing its toothy mouth. Stretching my arm out, I prodded its form delicately, wishing only to see what its alien carapace felt like before acting as my heart longed. A hand came up to feebly paw mine away. I ignored its pitiful attempts until it summed up enough power to earnestly slap my wrist away from its prying. Burning anger filled me. I raised my claw, a hiss sounding through my teeth, and slashed my limb downward. I felt a heavy tremor shake my arm, and a foul warmth touched my cold flesh. The creature cried out shrilly as I tore this wound into it.

The sound startled me. I ripped my claw away and took a step back. All my sistren rushed forward, their fear forgotten by my actions. The scream of the pathetic creature, sent out far sharper as many more a tooth and talon ripped into it, was drowned in the sound of ravenous squeals that demanded its sustaining flesh.

I looked to my hand as it happened, semioblivious to the happenings around me. Moist crimson-purple caked its brittle surface. A dark, runny fluid that seeped into the jagged cracks and crevices of my carapace. A lure, so strangely tantalizing in shape and color.

The worm whispered something to me from where it rest inside me. Before I knew what I was doing, I was instinctively pressing my claw to my mouth. The ichor touched my maw, and I felt horrible warmth slide between my teeth. My tongue rolled over a sweet taste and lapped up all it could. I thought for a scant moment to reflect on the strange creature that bled onto me when I struck it, but my curiosity was disrupted when something new came about me.

A hunger was what filled me then as my tasting concluded. It was cruel and biting. Crying out. It was the agony I felt when I was without the worm. It demanded to be sated. Past its plea that threatened to tear my frail body asunder, I only then heard the sounds of crunching and gnawing. I turned and looked to my broodmates. They had silenced the creature and were feasting upon it. Limbs and skin and chitin both true and false were being pulled away, but there was still so much to consume. Vacuous in my shambling stride, I shoved aside any who hindered my passage until I could see an opening to exploit without issue. Then I sank my jaws into fresh meat and blood and gorged all that I could fit into my maw.

And so I fed alongside my sistren. We devoured all that lay before us. The flesh. The blood. The bone. The Light. The sacred worm within me fed as well. We savored what we devoured. Every scrap and drop and that was ground between my teeth and rolled slowly down my throat. We savored the bitter Light most. We let it fill us and become cold and dead. We felt our strength grow greater. Then onto the lifeless scraps we descended, fighting and clawing hatefully at one another to get the larger share of it until nothing was left to scrounge about.

Our mother was pleased. She whispered her sweet nothings to us, whispered to us of our potential, our greatness, our place in this order, this Hive. She chittered to us, called us her precious Thralls, which we were. And then she departed, gliding away silently, leaving us be to digest our meal. Leaving us to plot and plan and dream of further ascension with our infant minds, if we could. Leaving us in the Darkness that gave us our life and our chance for glory eternal.

And for a time after, we were contented in its loving embrace.


	2. Chapter 1: A Distant Hunger

My hands were gripping my sacred weapon fiercely; much more fiercely than I intended.

Stale breath exited my mouth, sucked dry from my maw by the alien atmosphere that ever enveloped me. I marched with long and stable movements of my thin legs and my feet drank deep of the white lunar soil. My senses, greased and keened from the thrill of carnage, heightened my sensation to a degree that seemed barely realistic long after the killing concluded. I could feel every pallid grain particle to soak over my foot-claws and seep into my chitinous flesh. I could still hear the sound of battle ringing in my head, still fresh, still spoiling.

My stride never faltering in its step, I walked under the shadows of the towering Knights who had prior led us into the fray, the fray of that battle of significant magnitude, for a time such as this. As of now, peace had long since draped it fetid blanket over us, and we were returning to the Hellmouth with our heads held high. We had gained much to savor from the skirmish, and we had feasted on it. Yes, we fed upon death this day. Death and carnage, both in equal measure.

And I partook in it. I partook in all of it. My weapon, the Boomer, was a powerful device not oft found in the hands my caste, the naive Acolytes; we who were once Thralls, we who served as the infantry that guided our younger kin across the battlefield, we who were not yet of age to choose what gender would define the rest of our lives and our legacies. But a time ago I proved myself of the necessary determination, maturity, budding wisdom and skill, and I showed once more this day that I had earned the right to use it.

Who we brought destruction to on this otherwise barren, near-lifeless moon, as incursions by the Light-Wielders became scarce, were a race as foreign to these stars as we were. They were of the Fallen, forming a House of pitiful exiles among the throng of their broken kind.

And further breaking were they. In years of late, these Exiles had waned heavily in number. Whether by the gift of Hive claw and tooth and sword, or by the intruders taking their own leave of Luna, the Fallen residing nearby had been reduced in strength significantly. Still had they fought against us, still had they weeded out those too weak to earn glory eternal and fed the worms of those of more significant worth. But for all this bounty we collected, it would not last. image was interrupted, as I felt we were now approaching the Hellmouth. We entered, and my thoughts of the future were henceforth dulled.

Into the dark below we descended. The light of the sun that eternally basked this celestial object's surface was snuffed out, replaced now with the iron grip of darkness. It was more familiar than the gilded shine; it was far more precious, far more welcoming.

The sound of our march's clamor rebounded off of the walls in a resounding echo. It was not a sound that would leave soon, for our pathway was long, perhaps even winding and treacherous to the unfamiliar. There were, after all, hundreds of tunnels that split from the main path we traveled, so great and so many that those who might deign to intrude here would find themselves becoming hopelessly lost, both to direction and despair.

Our trek ended when we came upon a chamber, great and wide in its diameter. The bones of a titanic creature, long since slain and rendered as grey, lifeless, fossilized stone, littered its borders. Great markers were erected in spiraling patterns, glyphs etched on them detailing triumphs of old, lessons gained from the sacred Sword Logic, and our everlasting hatred for all things of Light.

I could see our mistress, our mother, she who led us, levitating at the great chamber's center, waiting patiently for our return. Her face was one wreathed by a visage of horned bone. Her chitinous frame, haggard and wizened but strong and firm, was clad in long, flowing robes, all crumbling and tattered at the edges with age and wear. Where she went, where she graced with her presence, would be covered in a delightfully frigid cold that one could assume was the blessed breath of the Deep itself.

And so, with all in attendance, the taking of tithe began. My Thralls gave to my sistren Acolytes and I a fair tithe collected from the skirmish. To the Wizards, the Knights, and the Will of Crota who spawned us, who raised us, we now gave ours. Many of our peers soon after departed into the deep to tend to their personal matters and look over their offerings, leaving us behind to sort out our own matters.

But we were not yet truly alone. The Will of Crota still remained. Her cunning gaze was still held over us, unblinking and ever alert. While the Thralls wandered about without learned care, we Acolytes knew better than to disregard her presence. We were all knelt down upon our knees, heads bowed respectfully. Now was our mother drifting, floating down to us. I could feel her, hear her passing near me.

But then she stopped. She was close to me still, closer than I ever thought she had been in my short life. She loomed over me, her freezing breath falling as a curtain onto my form. Then I felt a claw on my shoulder. I dared not look up, but I could think it; I could think of witnessing her beautiful visage so close, close enough to see her razor teeth curled into a permanent grin.

"Soon." Crota's widow broke through the silent ambiance when she spoke, crooning to me in the hollowest of voices, only to me. "Soon you will blossom into something far beyond the insignificant speck you were when I first brought you into this world, oh child mine." Then she purred, stroking that cold, loving claw over my brow. "Yes, I see your potential, oh Acolyte mine. You are almost worthy of a name."

My body trembled at her revelation. "Am I?" I asked, unable to stop myself from uttering this query and stealing a glance upward. For what fortune was mine, it did not seem to offend my mistress.

"Yes," nodded she, her stare still held on me, unmoving. "Your value to our sect grows greater with every day that passes by. Soon shall you transcend your current shell. All you need do is continue killing when your worm hungers for bloodshed. Continue feeding it, continue sharpening your prowess, continue proving yourself. As many before you have, so shall you, I feel."

She chittered, the soft and sweet sound almost amused in its tone. "And I find reason to suspect what destiny you will choose, when the time comes. I sense and see the path you long for is the same path I chose so very long ago."

I clacked my teeth together, pride filling me as my mother recognized my talents. I felt the need to show more deserved humility for this gift of conversation, and so my head bowed again. "I wish only to take after you, my honored progenitor, my God-Prince's widow. To remain female, to learn the arts of the Deep, to brood spawn of my own for the future of our sect. I lust for such a future."

"And receive it, you just might."

With that final faint whisper, the Will of Crota released me from her icy, caring grip. She cast her view upon my siblings, fleeting as it was, and flew slowly past them. Unleashing her sonorous cry that heeded to all who she was, she left this chamber with the correspondence of a phantom still lingering in the physical plane, off to tend to further matters that were her own. Also departing now was I, when I took my own leave of this great chamber several still moments later. As I processed my conversation with my mother, I could feel the eyes of my sistren Acolytes fixing on me. They were admiring and envious all the same. It was all so very euphoric.

I strode through the endless halls to the lightless cell that would house me, if only to rest after such a great day of glory. My Thralls followed behind me, shambling and mewling as I led them to a place where they could digest what they had kept for themselves. We reached it and they immediately gathered to the edges of the walls, huddling together as a something resembling a singular mass of living chitin. I also had my own bedding to lay on.

I sauntered to the back of the cell, where the walls intersected most jaggedly. It was there that a statue emerged. Carved and chiseled by the claws of the loyal, its image was easy to make out. It was that of a towering Knight with a magnificent sword in his hand, but any simple Knight, it was not. It was of the likeness of the Monster of Luna. It was that of Crota.

Placing my sacred weapon at its feet, I knelt down before it, allowing its presence to calm my mind. Never before had I laid eyes on the Eater of Hope himself; he had been murdered in the years before I came into being by the Light-Wielders. They had charged into his domain, had slain him with his own sword, had snuffed out the last lingering traces of his soul in its Ascendant realm before it could be reborn in the mortal world, kicking and screaming for the blood of his thrice-cursed assailants. Truly dead was he, but his legacy would live on in us, his spawn, his inheritors.

I felt the worm within me stir little, then it ceased its movements. Well and truly relaxed now was I, but my mind still wandered. Thoughts from before, of our future, came skittering back to me. On them I chose to stir.

We within the Hellmouth were not as we once were, as I knew well. Ever since the fall of hallowed Crota, and worse still after the fall of his father, the God-King Oryx, what remained of us, the God-Knight's sacred progeny under supervision of his surviving consort, were a crippled people. My sect might still have existed as it was blessed as, for still were we of the Spawn of Crota, yet we were but a shattered remnant of what we once were.

And not all was still within these lightless depths. Whispers came to me in my dreams; oh so very malevolent whispers, all sung beautiful and ringing true. Some of my kindred bore more furtive movements in the eves of late. Covens of Wizards shared their desires with one another, and Knights congregated with blades in hand, ever ready to use them. My mother was aware of their plots and plans, or, at least, so I thought suspected. If I could feel the pangs of those willing to test their mettle to most devoted degree possible, then she surely could as well.

But such was our way. Such was the way of the Sword Logic we all followed diligently, and so it was honored. My mother, my leader, my queen, she who spawned and reared us, would manifest her power when the right time came and bring those who dearly coveted to take her place to heel. She would crush them to oblivion, or else wound their ambitions until the taste of desire burned bitter in their mouths. But no matter what example she set, more of us still would inevitably rise up and challenge her. And so would I one day, as I knew I would since I drew my first true breath in this world.

My eyes closed as my head lowered, and I allowed sleep to try and take me. My mind was finally lulled off to the abyss of slumber with the lullaby of desire to fill it. Only time would tell if it would be realized, in the end. After all, fate was ever so fickle a thing. So fickle, so undeniably chaotic, so wrought with peril both comprehensible and unimaginable in size and scope...


End file.
